Raised in Canada, Phyllis Green moved to California to pursue graduate studies in art. She received an M.F.A. from U.C.L.A. in 1981, and began her professional career as an artist, educator and curator in Los Angeles. Her practice integrates feminist politics and classic modernist themes. Trained as a ceramic artist, she produces mixed media sculpture and installations that include video. This work has been exhibited extensively in exhibitions nationally and internationally, including "From Head to Toe: Concepts of the Body in 20th Century Art", "Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity", both at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and “Fiction@Love” at MOCA, Shanghai. A survey exhibition titled "Splendid Entities: 25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green" was presented at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles in 2011.

Green is the recipient of individual artist's fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. She was among the first group of artists to be awarded a C.O.L.A. grant by the City of Los Angeles in 1996, and in 2010 received project grants from the City of Santa Monica and the Durfee Foundation. Green has lectured in colleges and universities worldwide and is currently an adjunct faculty member in the College of Communications and Fine Arts at Loyola Marymount University and at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts. She produced and hosted a radio show on the visual arts, “LOOK/ hear”, on KXLU: 88.9FM from 1996 to 1998. She was appointed to the Santa Monica Arts Commission in 2000, and was elected Chair from 2004 to 2006. Green served as Guest Curator for Scripp's College 64th Ceramic Annual in 2008. She also organized "Is This The Real Life?", a group exhibition of work by Los Angeles artists that was presented in the Czech Republic in 2009.

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